Ambient Interfaces that Motivate Changes in Human Behavior

Peripheral or ambient displays move information from the periphery to the center of human attention and back. Our research group is interested in the interaction and interface design goal of how to best design ambient displays that help users to understand and change their behavior. We have found that there is often a disconnect between a person’s perceived and actual behavior, and we hypothesize that appropriately designed ambient displays can address this problem. Choosing physical activity as our first domain of exploration, we have developed the IMPACT system, which monitors physical activity throughout the day and provides feedback to the user in the form of detailed and ed displays. To date, we have explored abstraction and symbols, agents and avatars, and speech and sound user interfaces as display modalities that can present appropriate amounts of information in a lightweight fashion without being too distracting.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: PERVASIVE
• Authors: Jodi Forlizzi, Ian Li, Anind K. Dey
• Keywords: Ambient Displays, Applied Computing, Design Ambient Displays, PERVASIVE 2007, Physical Activity